One of the methods for terry cloth knitting on circular knitting machines and stocking knitting machines provides for the use, in combination, of vertical needles on the cylinder and terry cloth sinkers arranged horizontally on a ring of sinkers that lies above the cylinder and rotates with same. The terry cloth stitch is usually produced by at least two yarns fed in such a way that a first yarn contributes to the formation of a basic stitch, while the other yarn is used to form oblong terry cloth loops on the terry cloth sinkers.
To this end, each sinker usually has a plane for the formation of the basic stitch and at least one mouth, which lies above this plane and is intended to receive the yarn for the formation of terry cloth loops or curls.
The operating movements of the sinkers in relation to the needles for the collection of yarns on the stitch formation plane and on the mouth for formation of terry cloth loops are controlled by inlet and outlet cams with their own prearranged profile. However, the cams, on the one hand, and the sinkers, on the other hand, as they are currently configured, do not make it possible to use these sinkers for plain and terry cloth knitting or the production of manufactured articles that have plain stitch parts and terry cloth stitch parts. To carry out this type of knitting using the cams available, it is necessary to remove the upper mouth of the sinkers that must produce only the plain stitch or simply to replace the terry sloth sinkers with plain stitch sinkers corresponding to the non-terry cloth parts within the framework of a manufactured article.